Down East

Just ask Mid and De Kennedy, the owners of the Five Gables Inn in East Boothbay, who say they always encourage people to try to stay at least a couple days when they make their reservations.  This is not a sales ploy – the inn’s fifteen rooms are often booked well in advance, and trying to make a last-minute summer weekend reservation there is laughable (although they’d never laugh out loud at you; they’re far too nice).  It’s just that they believe a true vacation means staying put in one place for a spell.

This philosophy fits in nicely with the inn’s history, which dates back to an era when visitors came, steamer trunks in tow, and put down roots for an entire summer.  If you’re looking for digs reminiscent of those gentler days this is the place.  The Five Gables, billed as “the only remaining original nineteenth-century seaside summer hotel” in the area, started life as the Forest House, where seven dollars bought you  room and three daily squares for a week.  (Prices are somewhat higher in the twenty-first century.)  In the 1980s the inn was fully restored and updated.  In 1995 the Kennedys purchased it and moved here from Atlanta, bringing a heap of Southern hospitality along with them.

The inn is sited on a high hill overlooking Linekin Bay (pronounced LYNN-akin) at the end of a dead-end road, where the passing of a car is an event.  Within walking distance is the East Boothbay General Store, with its green 1946 Ford panel truck parked outside near a pile of wooden lobster traps that are for sale.